Nine teams comprised of local business people competed against each other with their spelling abilities during the 16th Annual Corporate Spelling Bee! St. Mary’s University took the Bee for the fourth year running! Merchants Bank took 2nd place and Peerless Chain, a new team for 2009, took 3rd place. Peerless Chain was dressed to impressed with their bee costumes to go along with their team name: The Un-Chained Melo-Bees (pictured). They won Creative Team Name and one of their members won the Costume contest! We had a large crowd of fans this year enjoying the event and cheering for their favorite teams. We also had a reverse raffle game and a Watkin’s team member agreed to dress in a bee costume, stand in the middle of the room, and dance the chicken dance for a $25 gift card to Hy-Vee. It was a very successful and FUN fundraiser that raised over $2,000 to support Winona ORC’s mission of creating job opportunities for people with disabilities.

Check out our PHOTOS section to see all the teams that participated.

Thank you to our sponsors, Winona Radio, Hy-Vee, and Peerless Chain.

The 16th Annual Corporate Spelling Bee was held on March 11th, 2009 at Bub's Brewery Basement.

If you are interested in participating, contact Mandi Householder and she will get you on the invite list for next year!